Page 20 of The Dreidl Disaster

And having been completely shoved out of his element, for the best of reasons, he followed her.

*

Liv wasn’t surehow to react to anything. A thrumming in the back of her mind had started when she saw Artur arrive on her doorstep. She almost collapsed at the sight of him on the security camera, looking gorgeous in a way that she hadn’t really allowed herself to take notice of since colliding into him in the back hallway of Levitan’s.

Why?

Was it because he was standing on her porch like a guy there to take her to dinner…on a date? Or was it just the way the gathering dark of October made him look?

She didn’t want to speculate.

It didn’t matter because she forced herself away from the dangerous path her thoughts had taken before meeting him at the door and walking to the car.

But those dangerous thoughts had been creeping back in.

“You okay?”

His voice yanked her out of the fog she’d been in, long enough to realize she’d stopped at the stoplight much longer than she wanted to; the light in front of her was now a brilliant green.

“Fine,” she said as she continued along the route. “Thinking about tonight.” Because the last thing she wanted was to discuss the random thrumming-turned-fluttering in her stomach.

With the man who was causing it.

Liv needed to remind herself that she was a woman in her thirties, for God’s sake, and not a little girl, prone to fall in love with any man thrown in her path.

Not everybody was Jerry McManus, but her life was forever changed because of him.

“Anything I should know?”

Once again, asking her for information as if he’d taken her words at face value. “No,” she said, shoving the conversation back from the underlining slide into the personal. “Just…a normal dinner. They’ll want strategy, and they’re on our side.”

“Our side?”

She smiled; she couldn’t help it. Whether or not he’d seen it, she wasn’t sure. “The side of organizing the event so it can take place.”

“Yes,” he said.

She could see his smile in the streetlights.

And she tried not to think about what that smile did to her. It wasn’t one of his usual megawatt smiles. It was tentative, soft.

The fact that she could tell the difference between his smiles was distressing her.

“You okay?”

“Still nervous,” she said, not explaining where those nerves actually derived from. “But that’s normal. Not necessarily something to be concerned about.”

He nodded, and she didn’t have the time to really analyze what was going on because she was pulling into the driveway.

“Nice decorations.”

She laughed. The house was decked out in pure Hanukkah. As per usual, there were blue baubles and a large menorah in the center of the yard, and blue and white lights in the shape of Jewish stars strung across every available surface.

“No dreidls though,” she said.

“No dreidls.”

She smiled. If she could joke, she could do this.

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